LITMIR.BIZ

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business life for fear that it might weaken the lines she drew to keep business and personal separate. Not that she had much of a personal life to keep separate but it was a good policy. Of course, all that went out the window the minute she saw Pops. He could call her whatever he liked.

       “You look the same, Pops,” she said, somewhat relieved. When Heath had told her Pops was beginning to suffer mentally, she’d imagined a diminished shell of the robust man she’d known her entire life. But the man standing before her looked the same as he always did, like someone who still rose with the sun and worked as hard as he played. Lora smiled, straightening her tight skirt before taking a seat opposite her Pops. “You don’t age. Must be the clean island air. Or the rum,” she teased.

       Pops winked and whispered conspiratorially, “Well, I have a secret but don’t tell your Grams…” Lora’s breath caught painfully in her chest and her smile froze but Pops didn’t seem to notice. He leaned forward, saying, “I slather on a bit of that pricey lotion your Grams buys from her catalogs. That stuff really works. Keeps my skin looking smooth as a baby’s behind. And smells good, too. But let’s keep that between me and you. If your Grams found out she’d never let me live it down.”

       Tears filled her eyes before she could stop them. She swallowed and forced a smile, gentling her voice as she said, “Pops, remember…Grams died ten years ago.” Lora placed a hand on his, squeezing in a show of support, hoping he’d snap into reality with the reminder.

       But Pops didn’t snap or bounce or any such thing. He broke.

       His expression faltered, confused, and Lora tried to mend things with more logic. “Pops, she’s in a happy place now. And she wouldn’t want us to waste tears when she’s no longer in pain and—”

       “I just saw her this morning,” Pops said, his voice shaking, his eyes darting as if trying to find the truth in the memory. Turning accusatory, he looked disappointed in Lora and that nearly crushed her. “Lorie, why would you say that? Your Grams is fine. She’s doing just fine. Clean bill of health.”

       “No, Pops,” Lora said, her own voice clogging with tears. “She died of breast cancer ten years ago. She found a lump and it had already moved to her lymph nodes. Grams died—”

       “Stop saying that!” he demanded, his voice roughening as he rose from his chair to get away from her. Lora’s heart hammered hard in her chest and she didn’t know what to do. Her Pops had never been short with her in her entire life. She didn’t recognize this man and it broke her heart. “Lana,” he called out, going in search of Lora’s grandmother and leaving Lora to stare in horror and dissolve into tears.

       And that’s how Heath found her.

      * * *

      THE©WORDS©DANCED©ON©HIS tongue, I told you so, but he wasn’t that big of an ass. He ought to walk away and leave Lora to soak in her own misery. Although his brain told him to go, he couldn’t quite get his feet to obey. He sighed, knowing he was about to try and console a wolverine of a woman and was likely to get his hand bit off, but he couldn’t just walk away when she was clearly heartbroken.

       “As long as we play along that Lana is still alive…he’s the same old Jack. It’s when reality is forced on him that he balks and freaks out. Lilah makes sure to keep Grams’s things clean, even going so far as to put a load of folded laundry on the bed for Pops to put away like she used to. Lilah also started replacing some of the lotions and stuff that Grams used so that Pops wouldn’t get thrown off.”

       Lora wiped at her face. “You’re continuing an elaborate farce? Doesn’t that seem the slightest bit inappropriate?”

       He flung his arm in the direction Pops had gone, growing angry all over. Damn the woman. Didn’t she see that Pops needed that illusion? “It’s a small price to pay for his happiness. The man means everything to me. I’m willing to play along for his sake.”

       “This is awful,” she said, shaking her head in horror. “You can’t keep pretending Grams is going to walk through the front door because she’s not going to! She’s gone. He needs to come to grips with that.”

       “He doesn’t have the mental agility to do that any longer. The harder we push, the worse his dementia becomes. Lilah and I agreed, it was best to let him have his fantasy. Besides, who’s it really hurting?”

       She stared. “Who’s it hurting?” she repeated incredulously, but even as she said the words, she stalled, and he knew the truth of it. It hurt her to pretend Grams was alive. Lora had never truly dealt with the pain of losing Grams. She just stuffed it down in that locked box where she put everything that was painful in her life and then never opened it again. “It’s not right,” she finished lamely.

       He softened in the face of her subtle vulnerability. He knew that Grams had always been Lora’s safe haven, her voice of reason. Losing her had been a blow to her emotional foundation. “The good news is, it doesn’t last long,” he said, trying to reassure her. “By dinner, he’ll go back to thinking Lana is here and she’s just out shopping or taking care of Larimar business.”

       Lora’s head shot up and her look of open distress at being caught in such a vulnerable position robbed her of words for a moment. But that moment didn’t last long. Soon enough her mouth tightened as her stare narrowed. “That’s the good news?” she said, grinding any residual moisture from her eyes and smoothing the tiny skirt as if the motion alone could release the wrinkles that a long plane ride and the humidity had created. “This is a nightmare. There is nothing good about it. How long has he been like this?”

       He shrugged. “A year, give or take a few months.”

       “A year?” She stared. “Why didn’t someone call me?”

       “We did. Remember?”

       Her blank stare may have fooled someone else but he knew right at this moment she was searching her memory, looking for some way to refute his blunt statement. Heath knew as much as she did that she was wrong. She’d flat out ignored every bit of correspondence that’d come her way when it’d come from her sisters or himself. He knew it—and better yet—so did she. Still, he was curious how she planned to wiggle her way out of that knowledge.

       He waited, one brow lifting in question and she had the grace to flush. Unable to hold his stare, she looked away. “Fine,” she conceded grudgingly, eager to move on. “What’s being done about it? This pretense isn’t a long-term solution.” She pressed her fingers to her temple, and he remembered her mentioning a headache earlier. For a second, she seemed to waver on her feet and Heath started forward but she shooed him away with a murmur of annoyance at her own reaction. “Damn humidity is getting to me. I need to change and get something to drink before I can think straight.”

       “Your room is in the same place,” Heath said, his mouth firming. Still the same hard-nosed woman she ever was. He held back the irritation that swelled when he remembered how he’d once thought the sun rose and set in her eyes. What a fool he was then. Things had certainly changed. “I assume you remember how to find it?”

       She shot him a look that said his sarcasm wasn’t appreciated, then gripped her luggage handle and trudged past him, her back ramrod straight.

       He didn’t know why Lora had been the one that’d always caught his eye. Even though her sisters were pretty in their own way, there’d been no one prettier than Lora in his opinion. When he thought of all the ways he’d tried to catch her attention, to get her to see him as more than the poor island boy who did odd jobs for her Pops…ugh, it twisted his gut in disgust.

       The first thing he remembered about Lora Bell was that impossibly dark hair streaming down her back like a waterfall at midnight. Lora, her sisters and their mother had arrived by ferry to St. John wearing sadness as plainly as their summer tanks. Except Lora—no, in her little face, he saw a cold knot of anger that twisted beneath the layer of grief. Whereas her younger sisters were wide-eyed with apprehension at their new surroundings, Lora had taken it in with the air of a soldier grimly going to battle. Looking back, he suspected

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